The poster sessions and social activities will be held in the PANIC2021 virtual space in Gather.town, which has several rooms. Gather.town only works correctly on Firefox and Chrome.
Important Links
Gather.Town: https://gather.town/app/xrZpsCJMWozBn6SJ/PANIC2021
Room assignment of posters: https://www.lip.pt/events/2021/panic/materials/poster_directory.php
Support in case of difficulties: panic2021@lip.pt , Zoom meeting helpdesk during poster sessions
Space Access
The link to the space is listed above. The password was sent by email.
The recommended web browsers are Firefox and Google Chrome. There is limited support to other browsers and therefore their use should be avoided.
Once you insert the password you will be brought to a page where you can customize your avatar. Please use your real name. Also, you may be requested to grant the web browser access to your microphone and webcam. Please accept the request, otherwise you will not be able to communicate with the other participants.
Once you are happy with your choice of avatar, you can click "Join the Gathering" to enter the space.
Moving around the space
Once you go through the login procedure, you will reach the PANIC2021 space.
To move around you should use the arrow keys in your keyboard.
Some objects in the space are interactive. When you reach the appropriate distance an interactive object will gain a yellow contour.
In order to interact with the object you should press the 'x' key.
If you approach another user, you will automatically initiate a private videoconference with him. Several users gathered together are linked into a single videoconference.
Space Organization
The PANIC2021 virtual space is divided into several rooms. Directions are placed in several places of the conference as in shown in the figure:
Below is a summary map of the whole space:
A short description of several rooms available are provided below:
- Poster rooms: Rooms where the posters are presented and the poster sessions will be held. More details on the poster session will be given below.
- Virtual Lisbon: Room with links to several videos of the city of Lisbon.
- Concert Hall: Room with links to a few concerts by the Gulbenkian Orchestra.
- Private Meeting Rooms: Rooms to host larger discussions. Anyone that enters these rooms will be connected to all other occupants.
- Lounge: Social space for small gatherings. Each table is its own small meeting room, allowing private discussions with limited attendance. Several of these tables have games that can be played in group.
Poster Sessions
The poster session will be held in the poster rooms. There are several rooms, linked through a lobby.
In this lobby there is a directory page (marked with a yellow contour in the figure above) that lists all posters, along with the room where they are located and their ID (you will need to press 'x' to view the page). This page contains also the link to the pdf version of the poster and a link to the video (if available).
When you enter a poster room, the poster ID is shown in front of the poster. There is also a conference space in front of each poster (shaded). During the poster session it is requested that the authors remain inside the shaded area associated with their poster. Anyone stepping into this area will automatically enter into videoconference with all other people in that shaded area, allowing the participants to discuss the poster with the author.
When you approach a poster space, a preview of the poster will be shown in a small window.
If you press 'x' the full version of the poster will be shown. Keep in mind that you are still in the poster discussion area, and therefore will be in videoconference with the author and any other participants in the same area.
Known Issues
- There is an issue in the Firefox browser that fails to play videos recorded with older encoders. Using another browser (like Google Chrome) seems to solve this issue.
Tricks and Tips
- For more details on the use of Gather.Town, please refer to its manual.
- Gather.Town establishes a connection to anyone nearby. This can be confusing and undesirable at times. If one presses the key combination <ctrl>+U (<cmd>+u in OSX) one can activate the quiet mode, reducing the connecting distance and therefore the number of connections.
- There are "portals" in several rooms that send you to the page with the Zoom connections. This will allow you to quickly leave the space to (re)join the conference. You can then return to the same web browser tab and re-enter the space without need to log in again.
- Be sure to accept the authorization request for the web browser to access your microphone and webcam.
- There are interactive objects with a map of the space.
